ITSSM Maturity

Throughout my 19 years in the IT Service and Support Management (ITSSM) industry, my experience has been that many teams are looking to improve their current operations. While supporting company growth, they are often looking for additional features and functionality, and unsure what the best approach should be.

Just this week I met with a client that fit this model; they are using an older version of an ITSSM tool to support their incident management needs, and looking for automation to monitor service levels and assist with proactive efforts to improve SLA compliance. They also want to increase their employees’ ability to submit requests to IT through services such as web self-service and chat.

We also meet many clients who are looking for improved analytics. Business leadership desiring greater insight into IT activities, and how IT is addressing company and employee needs, along with the quest for improved analytics in problem management and resolution are continuously increasing.

ITSSM applications are critical in supporting IT operations and should be flexible enough to meet each company’s needs. These tools should not dictate process, instead having a general “Out of the Box” approach that can be configured for individual processes. Clients with older ITSSM applications have a few options. They can look at newer releases of their applications to see if they can meet their needs. They can also review other offerings in the market. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a growing movement for many ITSSM applications. Their primary benefits can include reducing capital expenses for companies by providing infrastructure that is maintained by the service provider to providing expert administrative resources. ITSSM SaaS offerings have matured well enough that they should always be considered.

Many of these issues can be resolved by looking at IT operations maturity. The best approach for this is to work with ITSSM consulting companies to conduct a review of current operations. We advise many clients that the first step is gathering a complete picture of their current operations. Areas to consider are people, process, customer, and technology. This is important for identifying what they need to improve upon and prioritize those areas. At Long View we often conduct a workshop to capture their current ITSSM health (such as Vision-Mission statement, staffing levels, services offered, and tools/technologies currently being used), identify needs for improvement, and assign priorities to each area. Common areas of improvement include IT position descriptions (roles and responsibilities), appropriate staffing levels, incident escalation process, and measuring customer satisfaction.

Check out Long View’s offerings on our website for further information.

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About the Author

Al is an experienced support center director, consultant, public speaker and expert on the support industry. In the 20 years that Al has been involved with support centers, he has truly evolved at the same rate the support center has matured. In his early years at FrontRange Solutions, he was involved in process definition and support services. His consulting client list includes international organizations in the following industries: outsourcing, federal, banking, computer software and hardware development. Al has spoken at over twenty support center functions, including vendor user events, sales and marketing training events, industry conferences, local interest groups, and international presentations in Great Britain and Ireland.

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